Most of the crew come to me some time or other to enquire about recreational tapes or ask for help with research, but Morley never did. He was a shy, secretive sort of guy, a good engineer but weird, especially towards the end. Judging by his room he must have missed his girl a lot.
I unpack my bag, scatter my things around the room then sit on the bed, getting used to my new surroundings. As I flick off the light and lie down to sleep, Squeely starts to splash gently about. I guess I'll get used to it in the end
Evening. I open the garret door. A young woman in a white dress is slumped against the wall. The shadow of a tree sways on a latticed window above her head. I approach to examine her but hesitate, seeing she has a fever. At her feet there is a photowallet which I snatch up and take to a safe distance. I pull out the first holo.
She is young, two years old maybe, walking on a country track towards the camera. She is well wrapped, almost stout. A bold restless smile. There is no sign of buildings or animals. There are no pylons, wheelruts, hovertaxis or burnt fields.
Older now she plays on the mauve lava reefs of Narksos, poking a net in the oily water. The sun behind her rainbows the ocean's smooth surface.
Other holos fall thru my hand; of her in the wind cathedrals of Chandasim or cutting thru the Kavis mangroves. Memories never die; she has abandoned the memories.
Night falls; the shadow of the swaying tree becomes mere rustling. She has gone. I open the window and look down upon the quay. A three masted ship lit by lanterns is being loaded. Sailors balance up the narrow plank with heavy sacks over their shoulders. She is pleading with a young sailor who is shaking his head. He pulls a sack on his shoulders and takes his turn to cross the plank. She waits for him to come back ashore. When he does, he walks straight past her. She follows him to the heap of sacks.
I watch it all from a distance. In mime she walks up and down the quay between the plank and the sacks until everything is loaded. The sailors board for the last time; she makes no attempt to join them. They untie the hawsers which trail into the water leaving their own small wakes. She turns to look up at me in the window as if I were to blame. I wave, not knowing what to say.
I'm writing a note to Lama. I met her years ago at Earth's academy while I was training as a resource coordinator. She was born on the old planet and has never left it, though it's changed much since admin and communications were centralised to Rentam, where I came from. The old cities remain, many with districts restored to a bygone era, right down to customs and dress. We kept away from the tourists, hunting out the unspoilt bars, nature parks, and churches. I think Morley was an Earthman. At least, he often accessed files of Earth's history and myths, necessary reading if you want to be allowed into the theme parks.
Sometimes I send her a videoholo but I prefer to write. Earth being at the rim of the Emipre, it takes weeks now for messages to get thru so I compose what I want to say carefully. She is filling my nights and days. I often dream about her when I sleep in a new place but last night's were the most vivid I've ever had, set in a medieval riverport like the one at Duisberg. She was wearing a silk dress and acted strangely, moved by some unknown longing. Perhaps I want her to miss me. Later I'll consult the image library and if that turns up nothing, pipe the output into the grasper to pick out any standard archetypes.
A few crewmen asked for religious help today. Half of us on ship are buddhists though few of us have been to Earth. It took space travel for Buddhism to finally become Earth's main religion. Its impersonality and mistrust of symbols suits the way we have to live. They wanted to read the seminal texts in the original language. I primed their subcuticle memories with the necessary ideograms. They will have to do the semantic linking themselves. Just in case they research further I read other works of the period. Plato, Guatama and Lao-tse were contemporaries on the same small planet, separated by distance and language. It took wars then decadence to unite them.
She leads me to the beach by the fairground. We walk under the pier and compete in screams to hear our echoes. Walking on, I point out the constellations to her. I tell her I was born Libra but brought up Scorpio.
A woman sits against a groyne, swaying her head like a ragdoll. The moontide covers her with kelp, we watch the sea engulf her. She is dead, fish peck at her shining eyes. A yapping terrier runs along the water's edge towards her. Lama screams until her nose bleeds, dripping into the sea. "Oh god! I'm bleeding to death. Do something!" I run for help. I can hear her following as I reach the foot of the cliffs where rockpools hold the water of the last high tide. I look for puffin's nests where they used to be on the crumbling face. She hugs me from behind.
"Better?" I ask.
"Yes. Sorry, I don't know what came over me. I felt my life dripping away. That woman; who was she?"
"I don't know. I haven't been here for a while. My parents used to bring me here. Those caves, they were blasted out by smugglers."
She draws away. "Humans used to live in caves. Mystics still do. They lit fires to ward off animals and made of the stars whatever they wanted; dragons, heroes, crosses, they were all there as if placed for man alone."
"I like caves, the dampness of them. Sometimes the walls never dry." I stroke her waist. "The body has caverns called vessicles, you know. They secrete fluids as the body's movement massages them. Their elastic walls contract so that they're always full. Let's go inside."
"No!" she shouted, then more softly, "the way you talk about bodies makes me feel all funny inside."
Perhaps I'm compensating for the the increasing time delay from Earth by fantasising a more immediate dialog with Lama. We often visited the coast. The sea was a refuge from change. Last night I dreamt that Morley's pin-up had drowned. Perhaps she has heard the news by now. The rumour is that he had an accident while he was repairing an airlock and his body is drifting, mummified by space.
Squeely is livelier too, it must have been hungry with Morley gone. Its network of veins is fascinatingly complex. Maybe on its world the pattern is as unique as fingerprints. Sometimes the pattern changes. There's a message there I'm sure, more baffling than the most obscure Chinese symbols. It moves from the tank sometimes now, following me about the cabin.
More of the crew came to see me today. They consider me, the token intellectual, to be a trustworthy confidant. Patrolling the trade routes they might meet pirates at any moment but the isolation caused by the time delay scares them more, imposing a remorseless geometry upon their loneliness.. All video messages are history. Before we hear what we say we are history to ourselves, and we're still only half way thru our journey. It's my most busy time, helping with their boredom. We have the latest simulations for them but they tire of games. I'm tired too. Ship-night doesn't come soon enough.
Our drinks are beside us, untouched. The band is playing a slow, old waltz. It is musty, windows are curtained with black velvet. Only one couple dance, gliding elegantly over the polished floor. We look at each other across the table, wondering whether to join them. The music stops, the dancers bow and applause breaks out from the darkness we had assumed empty. Figures emerge to congratulate the couple then servants bring in the coats. The musicians pack away their instruments. Soon everyone has gone. Car doors slam and slam again. We take the floor, her long dress swishing the leaves that have just blown in.
"Do you come here often?" she asks.
"It's where we first met. Don't you remember?"
"It took a while to find it again. Can you tango?"
I shake my head. "It's stifling in here, let's go."
We open the French windows and step out into the fresh night air. Beyond the garden there are dunes of marram grass, then the beach. The full moon is overhead. She trips and pulls me down onto her. I look into her glowing eyes and for the first time see that they're blue, then I look deeper thru the vitreous and aqueous humors to the rich web of blood vessels on her retina. I see Squeely.
I jump awake in horror. Squeely releases her clammy grip from my skull and scuttles down my back faster than I had thought possible. Before I can think, I realise that the ship's siren is sounding. I dress and run down the crowded corridors to my radar console, waiting for the intruders to appear on the screen. I step the resolution up to maximum. Nothing.
What is Squeely trying to say to me? It was only when I looked searchingly into Lama's eyes that I realised who she really was. When I fell upon her last night I felt more at one with her than ever before. She has mined my secret synapses. Where does she comes from.
The all-clear sounds. I rush back to bed, passing crewmen complaining about the unsociable timing of the practice. They look at me strangely. I have nothing to say to them anymore.
I am in a room overlooking an empty piazza. A girl plays her hoop thru the long shadows. Opposite me a woman is polishing a mandolin.
"So you found me again" she says.
"Where do you come from?"
"We are both exiles of the sea. In your ship you hope to return."
"But we are en route to the spacestation at Bythenos."
"You spend each night by the shore, calling. Only I can hear you" she says, tossing the mandolin into the piazza and closing the shutters.
"Extravagent aren't you?" I ask.
"You'll see. Come on."
We descend the stairs then she lifts a trap door to reveal another staircase leading into the ground. She takes a few steps down.
"Are you coming? You're not scared of the dark are you?"
"Is this where you come from?" I say as we descend. The stairs, covered in green slime lead to dank water.
"The well sometimes floods the cellar. Be careful."
The water clears as we sink. The sun floats like the color inside a marble. We wander like children in a junkyard of barnacled cannon, ejected trashpods, heaps of bones, warped mandolins, seaweed drifting like smoke and tipped on its side, a schooner. She kneels beside it and prays. I'm puzzled by the tears that leak from her shut eyes.
We are no longer underwater. She opens the shutters. Outside, the girl has laid aside her hoop and is sitting back to back with a minstrel. He stops strumming his mandolin and whispers into her ear. They look up at me and smile.
The woman pulls the shutters to.
"Do you understand now?" When I don't answer she opens and closes the shutters like a musical box.
"See?"
I stick my holos up about the room and replay the old videos, trying to retrieve Lama. The pictures are computer enhanced, it's cheaper than full hi-res transmission. When I flick off the enhancement, the picture is broken up by random flecks of color but Lama's face, her own face, is recognisable thru it. For too long I depended on her image that drifted like a Marie Celeste. I'm in love with Squeely now. I want to find a way to be closer to her. I must learn control in this new element just as she has found her way around my past. She has not yet found images of Space there, only the oceans of Earth but each night she becomes more precise, picking thru my treasured memories, getting stronger.
How do they make love on her planet? Do they clasp together like hands underwater or is she the only one of her kind? I look at her beside me in her tank. I want to surround myself with water, to float free like Squeely can, like Morley. Perhaps they have to meet aliens in their formative years and commendeer symbols, having none of their own. Is there no way to wrench her from them, to know her purely? Maybe she's a Zen buddhist too. I'll ask her tonight if I can.
I don't know why I love her. Why did I love Lama? I wonder if I could lead a double life; by day with Lama and by night with Squeely. Lama need never know. I still need to see Lama, to keep her image strong in my mind so that Squeely can find it and rest there as if on her stone. Squeely is mysterious and distant enough as it is. I don't want to risk losing her.
Thoughts of her fill my days now. Though my attention wanders, my carelessless goes unnoticed in the library. I'm reading about the pre-buddhists. One dreamt he was a butterfly. When he woke he didn't know whether he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming it was a man. When will I stop dreaming? And when will she?